Centers & Organizations

Student Organization

Health Law Association
The Health Law Association is open to all law, LL.M., medical, graduate and undergraduate students. The group sponsors speakers and seminars in the health law field throughout the year and organizes social activities with medical and other graduate students. More information is available here.

Research Project

MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study
The public perception that mental disorder is strongly associated with violence drives both legal policy (e.g., civil commitment) and social practice (e.g., stigma) toward people with mental disorders. This study describes and characterizes the prevalence of community violence in a sample of people recently discharged from acute psychiatric facilities at three sites. 

UVA Organizations

Department of Public Health Sciences
By assembling a multidisciplinary team and combining the expertise of the basic clinical sciences of biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, health services research, and informatics, the Department aims to provide a better understanding of the relationships among biologic discoveries, patient and population characteristics, treatment options, public health interventions, systems, and outcomes.

Center for Biomedical Ethics
The Center's mission is to advance education, research, and service concerning moral values in health care. The Center's faculty works both individually and in research teams on problems in clinical ethics, the ethics of research involving human subjects, ethics and genetics, health care organization ethics, and the history of bioethics.

Center for Global Health
The Center cultivates and promotes interdisciplinary activities to support Global Health that involve the collaboration of departments, centers, as well as professionals and students from across the university. The Center is dedicated to alleviating diseases of poverty.

Institute on Aging
The Institute aims to enrich the lives of those who are old today and those who will be old tomorrow by acting as a catalyst and coordinator for interdisciplinary research, education, and service programs within the University.

Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy
The Institute offers training, educational, research, and service programs in the areas of forensic psychiatry, forensic psychology, and mental health law. Affiliated with the University's Law School, School of Medicine, and its College of Arts & Sciences, the Institute has an interdisciplinary faculty of attorneys, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. Its Forensic Psychiatry Clinic performs clinical evaluations in a wide variety of civil and criminal cases. The Institute conducts training programs for the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Services and provides continuing education for attorneys and judges. The institute also conducts extensive empirical and theoretical research in clinical criminology, forensic psychiatry/psychology, and mental health law and policy.

Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life 
The Institute fosters scholarship, education, and research in practical ethics. To this end, the Institute provides an intellectual home for faculty and students from across the University who wish to pursue interdisciplinary scholarship, research, and teaching on the complex ethical issues that underline contemporary professions, organizations, and public policy. Additionally, the Institute aims to connect, create and support programs in practical ethics throughout the University and thus create a model for ethics as an integral part of undergraduate, graduate, and professional education.

Center on Health Disparities
The Center focuses on interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research and interventions to reduce health disparities.

School of Medicine
The School of Medicine is a nationally recognized, medium-sized school with balanced programs of undergraduate and graduate medical education and with biomedical research programs nationally recognized for their stature and productivity. Law students have the opportunity to interact with faculty, residents, and students from many departments in the medical school, including the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Center for Global Health.